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BORDER CROSSINGS
Over at his Variety blog, “The Circuit,” Mike Jones writes in his Toronto wrap-up about an encounter with one of the Canada/U.S. border crossing officials:
The border agent at the Toronto airport held me at the desk, studying my business card. He was trying to think up the title of a film he’d seen long ago. He’d scoured the internet for it and come up empty. As the line grew behind me, he described it as a story of a man abused by his wife. It involved drinking, a child, poverty, and more drinking. He leaned forward, pointing his pen, saying – “Abuse happens to men, too, you know.”
I sensed some experience there and quickly agreed, pushed back the business card, and told him to email me his research and I’d see what I could do. He waved me through, saying, “I know it played at the festival one year. It must have, you know?”
I wonder if he was the same agent I had. Upon returning from the festival, I was asked, customarily, what I did. “I’m a journalist and a producer,” I replied. He paged through my passport, typed a few keystrokes into his computer and stared at the screen. “I see you’ve produced a bunch of movies,” he said. Yes, I replied, before saying that I was surprised that whatever new Homeland Security border-crossing measures have been ennacted go so far as to link movie titles to passport numbers. “No,” he laughed, “I’m looking at IMDb! Have a good trip.”
Just another Toronto film fan.
